Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center Photo from the collections of the John J. This photo is from its third anniversary party in 1983, well before it expanded to occupy its entire building. Woody’s, one of the oldest bars still in operation in the Gayborhood, attracted a predominantly white clientele but was not a prime target for complaints of discrimination at the time.
If you’re of a certain age, the names Equus, Kurt’s, and Key West should ring bells. Then as now, the complaints largely centered on a few clubs with dance floors that were hugely popular with the mainstream gay male community. Minorities and women alleged that they were being singled out for extra scrutiny at the most popular clubs in what was not yet called the Gayborhood. “What has been will be again what has been done will be done again there is nothing new under the sun.” - Ecclesiastes 1:9Īnd so it is with the curious case of iCandy, which will be one of the focal points of Tuesday’s Philadelphia Human Relations Commission hearing into discrimination at Philly’s LGBT bars.īack in the mid-1980s, complaints similar to those recently leveled against the management at iCandy and Woody’s were rife in the community. Detail from a form filed by an observer who reported on the scene at Mamzelle’s, a lesbian-oriented dance club located atop the Bike Stop in the mid-1980s.